Format variants

A format variant represents a level of fidelity for clipboard content.

All formats generate at a minimum a plaintext variant. Some formats also include a rich-text variant for more advanced use cases that gets written to the clipboard alongside the plaintext variant.

The applied variant depends on where tabs are pasted.

An example of a format that includes a rich-text variant is Link. Tabs that were copied as Link paste into documents, spreadsheets, Slack, or email drafts as clickable links. In apps that do not support clickable links such as text editors, they paste as URLs instead.

Custom formats also feature a rich-text variant, since link is an available template token.

Variant control

Many apps allow you to select from available clipboard variants when pasting. This is sometimes referred to as "Paste special".

Apps also commonly support the Shift + Ctrl + v keyboard shortcut (or Shift + Cmd + v on a Mac) as an alternative to Ctrl + v that favors plaintext.